Chiral magnetic and vortical effects in high-energy nuclear collisions—A status report

2015/11/30 by D. E. Kharzeev, Dmitri E. Kharzeev, J. Liao +3 · 29 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Dissipative system #Gauge theory #Gluon #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Magnetic field #Nuclear physics #Particle physics #Physics #Plasma #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quark #Quark–gluon plasma #cond-mat.str-el #hep-ph #hep-th #nucl-ex #nucl-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.ppnp.2016.01.001

Invited review for Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics; 38 pages, 25 figures; v2 matching published version

openalex publication_date 2016/01/16 · arxiv created 2016/03/19 · arxiv updated 2016/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The interplay of quantum anomalies with magnetic field and vorticity results in a variety of novel non-dissipative transport phenomena in systems with chiral fermions, including the quark-gluon plasma. Among them is the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME) -- the generation of electric current along an external magnetic field induced by chirality imbalance. Because the chirality imbalance is related to the global topology of gauge fields, the CME current is topologically protected and hence non-dissipative even in the presence of strong interactions. As a result, the CME and related quantum phenomena affect the hydrodynamical and transport behavior of strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma, and can be studied in relativistic heavy ion collisions where strong magnetic fields are created by the colliding ions. Evidence for the CME and related phenomena has been reported by the STAR Collaboration at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at BNL, and by the ALICE Collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The goal of the present review is to provide an elementary introduction into the physics of anomalous chiral effects, to describe the current status of experimental studies in heavy ion physics, and to outline the future work, both in experiment and theory, needed to eliminate the existing uncertainties in the interpretation of the data.

Citations

• Alternative Contributions to the Angular Correlations Observed at RHIC Associated with Parity Fluctuations
• Magnetic Catalysis: A Review
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• Effects of momentum conservation and flow on angular correlations observed in experiments at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
• Charge-dependent directed flow in asymmetric nuclear collisions
• Instantons in QCD
• On the phase transition towards permanent quark confinement
• Chiral magnetic wave
• Microscopic models for ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions
• Azimuthal Charged-Particle Correlations and Possible Local Strong Parity Violation
• The STAR time projection chamber: a unique tool for studying high multiplicity events at RHIC
• Axial-Vector Vertex in Spinor Electrodynamics

Cited by

• Linearly polarized gluons and axial charge fluctuations in the glasma
• Chiral Vortical and Magnetic Effects in Anomalous Hydrodynamics
• One-loop QCD thermodynamics in a strong homogeneous and static magnetic field
• A practical methodology for Λ global polarization extraction in fixed-target experiments
• Probing the chiral magnetic effect via transverse spherocity event classification in relativistic heavy-ion collisions
• Transient anomalous charge production in strong-field QCD
• Nonlinear chiral transport in Dirac semimetals
• Wigner functions for fermions in strong magnetic fields
• Chirality imbalance and chiral magnetic effect under a parallel electromagnetic field
• Electrical conductivity of quark-gluon plasma in strong magnetic fields
• Nonlinear responses of chiral fluids from kinetic theory
• Challenges in flow background removal in search for the chiral magnetic effect
• Complete and consistent chiral transport from Wigner function formalism
• Probing topological order of QCD at Electron Ion Collider
• Nonequilibrium quark production in the expanding QCD plasma
• Relaxation times for chiral transport phenomena and spin polarization in a strongly coupled plasma
• Side-jump induced spin-orbit interaction of chiral fluids from kinetic theory
• 1+1 dimensional relativistic magnetohydrodynamics with longitudinal acceleration
• Charge-Dependent Directed Flow in Cu+Au Collisions at sNN=200 GeV
• Thermal transport in a weakly magnetized hot QCD medium
• Anomalous effects of dense matter under rotation
• Investigation of Experimental Observables in Search of the Chiral Magnetic Effect in Heavy-ion Collisions in the STAR experiment
• Quark mass correction to chiral separation effect and pseudoscalar condensate
• Importance of Isobar Density Distributions on the Chiral Magnetic Effect Search
• Topological charge fluctuations in the Glasma
• Dynamical Topological Transitions in the Massive Schwinger Model with a θ Term
• Measurement of e+e− Momentum and Angular Distributions from Linearly Polarized Photon Collisions
• Magnetic Field in the Charged Subatomic Swirl
• Vortical Effects for Free Fermions on Anti-De Sitter Space-Time

Related

• Anomalous Chiral Transport in Heavy Ion Collisions
• Chiral magnetic effect in heavy ion collisions and beyond
• Experimental results on chiral magnetic and vortical effects
• Search for anomalous chiral effects in heavy-ion collisions with ALICE
• Experimental review on the chiral magnetic effect in relativistic heavy ion collisions